In the very slim event that legit wiki editor would also happen to have had his IP previously used by a malicious botnet, wouldn't a "IP blocked" message simply inform him that his computer has been compromised? It seems like the collateral damage would still be very very small. Also, related, wiki spam is usually reviewed by human eyes and is less error-prone.
________________________________ From: Richard legalize@xmission.com To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org; John phoenixoverride@gmail.com Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [MediaWiki-l] Wiki spam. Stronger fightback.
In article CAP-JHpmJc=vLFuyfeTf2iKTn4j43PHm9QnaDDhVVypz3MVzB-A@mail.gmail.com, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com writes:
One thing that might work (wouldnt be 100%) would be a method for identifying IP ranges of know abuse where legit collateral is minimal and keeping a database of these and auto-blocking them.
The problem with all these schemes of identifying perpetrators is that they often operate through botnets and the IP address doing the edit has nothing at all to do with the perpetrator.